Deals Report: Week’s M&A includes AZ-Fusion, Novo Nordisk-Cardior
Plus: Intellia deciding to step back from co-developing Factor-IX therapy with Regeneron and GSK returns Sosei’s GPR35 agonist after deprioritization
Two company acquisitions featured prominently among the deals in the past seven days, with AstraZeneca buying Fusion for up to $2.4 billion and Novo adding RNA therapies for cardiovascular diseases to its portfolio via the takeout of Cardior for up to $1.1 billion.
AstraZeneca plc (LSE:AZN; NASDAQ:AZN) paid $2 billion of that $2.4 billion total up front to acquire Fusion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:FUSN), gaining a radioligand program that delivers actinium-225 and targets PSMA to treat prostate cancer. FPT-2265 is in Phase II testing for metastatic castration-resistance prostate cancer patients who have already received Pluvicto lutetium vipivotide tetraxetan, a taxane therapy, or both. Fusion also has wholly-owned programs with α-emitting payloads in Phase I targeting IGF1R and NTSR1, plus another targeting EGFR and c-MET that was already partnered with AZ, plus a deep preclinical and discovery pipeline...